Unfortunately, the same wasn’t true of those in the banking system. It was a minor miracle that Morton got a response over the weekend at all. Warrants had been obtained and served on some of the city’s biggest banks in order to obtain the financial details of Morton’s five primary suspects: Brianna Jackson (née DeLange), Aleksander Barchester, Gabriella Curzon, Kallum Fielder and Patrick ‘Paddy’ Malone.
Those details didn’t arrive until shortly after nine, by which time Morton had been joined by DI Bertram Ayala, who came in toting a bag full of bagels and two large cups of fancy coffee from the bakery down the street.
‘Look at this. They’re all bloody broke. Patrick Malone doesn’t have two pennies to rub together on paper. The only cash he’s got going in comes from the taxpayer.’ Morton pushed a stack of printouts towards Ayala.
After an interval Morton said, ‘Hello. What do we have here? Our friend Mr Barchester might not be a Lord, but he is worth a few quid. Nearly half a million in cash on deposit with a private bank,’ Morton said.’
‘Isn’t that the minimum deposit for Coutts?’ Ayala asked.
‘No idea. Look at Barchester’s last three bank statements. It looks like he’s been transferring £1,500 a month to Miss Curzon. Every month on the third. I wonder what that’s for.’
‘Charity? She is a student and we know they’ve been sleeping together. Or money for sex. Sounds like prostitution.’
‘Sounds like being married... Though perhaps without the sex,’ Morton said with a chuckle.
‘Gabriella isn’t the only one getting handouts. Look at Brianna’s bank statement. Two grand a month coming in from our victim.’
‘In one lump sum?’
‘No. Dribs and drabs throughout the month, but always adding up to about two thousand. Is that relevant, chief?’ Ayala asked.
‘It’s certainly curious. That would be a good reason not to kill her.’
‘Unless she’s been getting greedy.’
Ayala flipped through Brianna’s bank statements. ‘The amounts haven’t changed, boss. Two grand a month give or take a couple of quid going back for years. Why now?’
‘Good question. And what of our victim? She’s giving away two grand a month, but barely keeps the same again for herself. I know I’d do anything for family, but that seems rather extravagant. Ellis had to have much higher outgoings than her sister. There’s a big difference between paying rent on a place in Southwark and maintaining a huge house in Richmond.’
‘But she was making it. She’s just about stayed in the black.’
‘What’s the estate worth? Check with the Land Registry and see if there’s an outstanding mortgage on the house.’
‘I already did, boss. The house has a charge registered in favour of Aleksander Barchester Holdings Limited.’
‘Her boss lent her money? That’s insane. Why not just go to a bank?’
‘Yes, but it’s recent. She had the whole thing paid off ten years ago then remortgaged Edgecombe Lodge a few months ago. Perhaps that’s when the money from her days as a big shot ran out.’
‘If I suddenly ran out of money, I’d come clean and stop giving away what I had left,’ Morton said.
‘Would you though? Wouldn’t pride come into it? If you’ve been seen as the family provider for years, and suddenly you can’t contribute, are you sure you’d never be tempted to fake it? Ellis might have assumed she’d be back in the big leagues sooner rather than later so it didn’t matter if she gave away the money. By the time she realised that wasn’t going to happen, it was too late. She’d committed, and to pull out months or years after the fall from grace could have been too much to bear. She gave away the money not out of sisterly love, but to save face.’
‘That’s certainly possible. In which case, where did the £10,000 in the safe come from? There’s more to the money than meets the eye.’
‘What’s our next move, boss?’
‘We find the man that called in the anonymous tip. It’s time to pay a visit to Mr David McArthur of DMC Electricals.’
Chapter 23: The Thief
Saturday April 12th– 15:00
Potter’s Bar was a commuter haven. Located just off the M25, and with a local train and tube station nearby, living in Potter’s Bar was a nice compromise between the City and the country. It was technically in Hertfordshire, which meant Morton was on borrowed turf. He’d pinged off an email to a colleague with Hertfordshire Constabulary as a courtesy before he and Ayala left, which was acknowledged while they were on the A1 headed towards the home of David McArthur, owner of DMC Electricals and the boss of Sergei Krasnodar.
McArthur lived in a detached property with a generous garage which doubled up as his home office. DMC Electricals had been incorporated and the shares in the company were split between McArthur and his wife, presumably to maximise their combined tax allowances.
The company had showed a healthy gross profit of two hundred thousand in the last year accounts had been filed. The net was less than a third of that, which immediately put Morton on edge. Few electricians owned such well-proportioned homes. Oak Cottage, as McArthur had named it, in 2007 had cost him a cool £950,000. It was possible that McArthur had inherited money, but Morton thought it more likely that McArthur was doing work off the books. It wasn’t illegal to take cash payments for work, but it was illegal to fail to declare them.
As they approached the door, a homemade “Beware of the Dog!” sign came into view.
‘That’s got to be to scare off salesmen, right?’ Ayala asked.
‘One way to find out.’ Morton knocked the door, and the sound of barking erupted from the hallway inside. They heard a man’s voice, the same South London accent as on the call recording, as he tried to hush the dog.
The door swung open, and a scruffy nose tried to press its way between its owner and the door. The man pushed the dog back inside and opened the door. The dog sat behind its owner and eyed the detectives warily.
‘Don’t mind him. He’s a big softie really.’
‘What kind of a dog is he?’ Morton asked.
‘German shepherd–malamute cross. The best alarm system money can buy. What can I do for you, gents?’
‘We’re investigating the murder of Ellis DeLange.’
‘Lass in the news this week?’ McArthur said. ‘Wish I could help you, but Richmond is a million miles from Potter’s Bar. You’d be better off canvassing there.’
‘You didn’t call in a tip to our hotline then?’
McArthur paled, then clenched his jaw. ‘Why would I have anything to do with it?’
Morton pulled his phone from his pocket and hit play. The recording blared out, ‘Dead body. Edgecombe Lodge. Richmond. Doors open.’
‘That sounds an awful lot like you, Mr McArthur.’
‘That’s much too deep for my voice. Besides, it sounds an awful lot like a lot of men in London, Mr...?’
‘Morton. DCI Morton. Not all men in London give the phone that made that call to their apprentices–’
The door slammed shut.
‘Quick!’ Morton yelled, ‘around the back!’
Ayala sprinted to the side of the house and out of view. Morton eyed up the door, swore under his breath then charged at it. At the last second, he threw his right leg out towards the right-hand side where the door was locked, and slammed his heel into the door. His momentum carried him forward and his foot collided with the door with a loud crack. The door splintered immediately, but didn’t collapse. He pulled back, steadied himself so that he could aim again, being careful not to hit the lock itself, and then kicked again.
The door swung inwards, leaving a chunk of wood attached to the lock on the right-hand side. The dog was waiting for him just inside, but scarpered when the door came crashing inwards. Morton spotted light at the back of the property, through the kitchen. The door to the back garden was already open.
Morton ran. His legs ached from the exertion of taking the door down, but he powered through the ho
use as quickly as he could. He raced past the stairwell, through the hallway into the kitchen and towards the backdoor. He just reached the back door when he heard a floorboard creak above him.
McArthur was trying to double bluff them. Morton doubled back, then darted up the stairs. At the landing on the first floor, he paused for a second. Ayala had gone around the back. If he were McArthur, he’d be trying to get out of the front of the house.
The garage! The double garage was beneath a bay window, the perfect escape onto the street. Morton turned and vaulted back down the stairs four at a time, and emerged from the front of the house just as McArthur dropped from the roof of the garage to the ground outside with a ‘whoomph’.
Morton dived towards him, using his weight to pin the suspect down. ‘Mr McArthur! You’re under arrest on suspicion of handling stolen goods.’
Ayala reappeared from around the side of the house.
‘Been for a nice stroll, have you, Bertram? Help me get this heffalump into the back of the car, will you?’
***
Before McArthur could be brought into an interview suite, he demanded to speak to a lawyer. McArthur was turned over to the Custody Sergeant and processed. The search of his person turned up an iPhone, a wallet and a set of car and house keys. He was then photographed and swabbed, and his DNA sample sent for urgent comparison to the samples on file for the DeLange murder.
McArthur wasn’t in the system already. He didn’t have so much as a speeding ticket to his name. He didn’t have a go-to lawyer, which meant he got stuck with whoever happened to be the duty solicitor for the day.
Unfortunately for Morton, the duty solicitor was a little more competent than average. Genevieve Hollis was a direct access barrister, and an advocate for criminal rights to boot.
‘And on a Saturday too. Don’t lawyers have social lives?’ Morton bemoaned his misfortune.
‘She can’t be any worse than that snake, Elliot Morgan-Bryant,’ Ayala replied.
‘Oh, yes, she can. She’s honest.’
***
An hour later, and Morton and Ayala were seated opposite Ms Hollis and the suspect in Interview Suite One. McArthur had been given plenty of time to consult with his lawyer, and looked visibly more relaxed than he did in Potter’s Bar. He leaned back in his chair and smirked at Morton.
‘Let the tape reflect that Mr McArthur is smirking in response to my last question. I’ll ask you again, Mr McArthur, was the voice on the tape you?’
‘It doesn’t sound like me, does it?’
Morton produced an evidence bag which contained the Nokia 3310 that Sergei Krasnodar had had on his person. He then placed McArthur’s own iPhone next to it, and began to tap away at the screen.
‘I think, Mr McArthur, that the reason it sounds slightly different is that you used an app to modify your voice. This app in fact.’
Morton turned the phone around so that McArthur and his lawyer could see it. The iPrankCall app was open on screen.
‘Mr Morton! You had no right to search my client’s phone.’
‘I disagree. He waived any expectation of privacy when he failed to set a simple password. Besides, we would have unlocked it anyway. It’s not unreasonable to suppose this phone might have been stolen–’
‘So run an IMEI check,’ the lawyer suggested.
‘Or,’ Morton continued, ‘that the phone might contain evidence like the contact details of your client’s fence. And what’s this? An audio file within the app? Let’s just play that back.’
‘Dead body. Edgecombe Lodge. Richmond. Door’s open,’ echoed throughout the interview suite.
‘That’s pretty damning if you ask me. Clever too. I assume you played the distorted voice back to your simple Nokia to avoid detection.’
‘So I went to the house,’ McArthur said. ‘Big deal. I didn’t steal anything.’
‘You didn’t steal anything. Really? And what exactly were you doing there then?’
‘Looking. Don’t you ever get curious about what a rich person’s house looks like?’
‘You want me to believe that you just happened to trespass on Ellis DeLange’s property the day after she was murdered.’
‘Doesn’t matter what you believe, Mr Morton.’ McArthur grinned and jerked his head towards his lawyer. ‘She says trespass ain’t a crime. It’s a tort. So tell me what you think I stole, Mr Morton.’
‘Did you break in?’
‘Nope.’
‘So you’re now saying you just happened to trespass on the property of a famous photographer on the day after she was murdered, and that the house was unlocked. That’s pretty far-fetched.’
‘Truth can be stranger than fiction, can’t it?’
‘You smug git. I put it to you that if you’re willing to break into a house then you were there to steal. Do you deny it?’
‘Categorically.’
‘Then our search of your home won’t turn up anything, will it?’
The smile from his face vanished.
‘I’d like to speak with my lawyer.’
‘Fine. Interview terminated at 13:04.’
***
At half past two, DS Mayberry returned with the search team. Mayberry seemed to be walking a little taller when he led the team into the Incident Room where Morton and Ayala awaited their return.
‘That dog is v-vicious!’ Mayberry stuttered. He thrust his arm towards them; a minor mark could be seen on his forearm.
‘The dog’s got nothing on that front door. I practically dislocated my hip getting in,’ Morton quipped. ‘Don’t keep us in suspense. What did you find?’
Mayberry whistled loudly, and a WPC trotted into the room carrying a pink suitcase, the wheeled kind popular with travellers who only take carry-on. It was in an oversize evidence bag and the label read ‘Oak Cottage, 13:35, April 12th’.
‘Nice work. Chain of custody paperwork complete?’
‘Y-yes, sir.’
‘Impressive. Let’s have a look inside then.’
Mayberry laid out a polythene liner on the table and proceeded to decant the contents of the suitcase.
‘Clothes?’ Morton said.
The suitcase was full of women’s clothing. Underwear, trousers, three blouses, a skirt and a gown were inside together with a hairbrush and various toiletries.
‘Looks like about a week’s worth.’ Ayala said. The case was about two thirds full.
‘And we’re sure it belongs to Ellis?’
‘She’s a size six. So are these clothes. McArthur’s wife wears a fourteen. It fits.’
‘See if we can get DNA samples from the hairbrush and toothbrush to be on the safe side. Good job, Mayberry.’
‘Th-th-thanks, boss.’
***
‘Interview resumed at 15:16. Present are Mr David McArthur, Ms Genevieve Hollis, Detective Inspector Bertram Ayala and DCI David Morton.’
Ayala held up the suitcase.
‘Do you recognise this, Mr McArthur?’ Ayala asked.
‘Should I?’
‘It was found in your house.’
McArthur shrugged, as if to suggest that suitcase could be his.
‘Do you regularly wear women’s clothing, Mr McArthur? No judgement if you do,’ Ayala said.
‘No!’ McArthur spat.
Morton smiled. Nothing like pride to elicit a reaction. ‘Then to whom does it belong, Mr McAthur?’ he asked.
‘Ellis DeLange. I... borrowed it.’
‘You borrowed it?’ Morton mocked.
‘Yes. I’m a fan. I was always going to give it back. I had no intention of permanently depriving Miss DeLange of the goods.’
‘Her estate you mean. And I’m fairly certain your lawyer told you to say that. So now your story is that you found an unlocked multimillion-pound house on the day the celebrity owner of the home died, then borrowed her suitcase unilaterally before phoning us using a voice-modifier app? That’s one heck of a tall tale. You ever thought about writing fiction, Mr McArthur?’
/>
‘My client has already answered you, Mr Morton. Unless you can prove intent to steal, this interview is over.’
Why would anyone steal clothing? Morton wondered. Unless... they wouldn’t. There was one thing Ellis wouldn’t go on a business trip without.
‘Mr McArthur, what else was in the bag? Did it contain all of Ellis DeLange’s photography equipment?’
McArthur turned to his lawyer and whispered in her ear.
‘Mr Morton, my client is a Good Samaritan. He went out of his way to call you to notify you of a murder that you had no idea happened. Can we put our cards on the table here?’
‘By all means.’
‘If, and this is hypothetical of course, my client were to admit to stealing camera equipment, would that confession be enough to get him a deal?’
‘Stolen goods don’t interest me, Ms Hollis. If your client tells us everything in writing – including how he knew the house would be empty – then he walks out of here a free man. Do we have a deal?’
McArthur nodded.
‘The recording can’t see you nodding, Mr McArthur.’
‘Yes, we have a deal.’
An hour later, Morton was back in his office clutching a written witness statement. He placed it on his desk and turned on his desk lamp, then began to read while Ayala peered over his shoulder.
WITNESS STATEMENT OF DAVID MCARTHUR
On the morning of March 30th at around eleven o’clock in the morning, I went to Edgecombe Lodge in Richmond. The homeowner, Ellis DeLange, was previously known to me as she hired my firm, DMC Electricals, on multiple occasions. On the last occasion we were hired to install a Smart Thermostat in her residence.
When I set up the system, I demonstrated the ‘Holiday’ feature to Miss DeLange. It allows you to tell the system when you will be away from the house for a protracted period. I set up the system so that it emailed me a notification whenever this feature was used.
Ten Guilty Men (A DCI Morton Crime Novel Book 3) Page 11
